A week (or weak?) in Educationland

The Buffalo News published a number of articles on education, most of which (as usual) missed the point or promoted the corporate agenda of its billionaire owner Warren Buffet. While no one actually wants to see students fail – the agenda being promoted by the BN, Superintendent Kriner Cash, Commissioner Elia, Governor Andrew “Status” Cuomo, and “Grassroots” - a Buffalo based organization that is pushing for mayoral control over the schools, is charging right into that wall.

It started on Sunday (Jan 10) with the article “Buffalo schools will find 2016 to be a busy school year.” There were the usual comments about the negotiations over the teachers' contract, trying to cut class sizes, improving literacy, etc but the focus was really about a growing (un)civil war in Buffalo and its schools.

There is the upcoming school board election where one (1) vote decides many issues in the district. Let's face it, the school board is a little dysfunctional because of petty politics and Carl PaladiNO's “my way or the highway” attitude. Supt. Cash was basically brought in by him & his cronies to privatize the school district. And they ran into opposition from, well, basically everybody?

Then there is the “Grassroots” movement. Nice name, but it isn't what it sounds like. It is a group of people working to put the BCSD under the control of the mayor. Like what NYC has. That doesn't always work well as the school board is appointed by the mayor and what if (somehow) a Republican gets in and pushes for privatization? Who loses? No the best of ideas.

Then there is Supt. Cash. This quote says it all: “We have a line that goes all the way to the federal level. There's a lot that can happen to boards if they don't do what they are supposed to do.”

Holy cow. If that isn't a threat against the school board and the democratic process, I don't know what it is then. To boot – he rents (not bought) a house in Buffalo. He knows the writing is on the wall. He's seen what has happened to the last several superintendents and he's not placing any bets as to how long he will be here.

Jan. 10 continued with the assault on education by the News in an op-ed called “Stand firm” where the editors placed the blame for the failure of the BCSD on the backs of the teachers and the unions. They claim that there have been “good faith” efforts by Supt. Cash to reach out to the union and basically have the union sell itself out so that full scale privatization can be carried out.

The editorial further continued in stating that Commissioner Elia needed to be tough on the city. The News admits that testing was imposed from above and that the Common Core standards were poorly written and implemented, but so what? Change needs to come and it needs to come on the backs of the teachers, not those that created the mess in the first place.

Tuesday saw the assault continue with the article “Graduation rate in Buffalo schools passes 60%.” Now, to its credit the article does bring to attention the issues of English Language Learners (those whose primary language is something other than English) and the struggles that they have with all the testing.

It also points out the successes that Niagara Falls has with co-taught classes. Two teachers, one content teacher (ELA, Social Studies, Math, Science, Foreign Language) and one special education teacher work together to teach the class. The content teacher teaches (obviously) the content while the special education teacher helps the struggling students wt the learning process and study skills so that they can succeed. Novel concept, but that costs money and where will an impoverished school district get that type of cash?

There is also a focus on STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. A very hands on class that focuses on problem solving with the content. (The big fancy ed lingo is “Problem Based Learning” where students are taught a concept and then have to solve a real world problem with it.) Not surprisingly, students love these classes because they can directly see the use and – brace yourself – there's no standardized test for these classes. Here's the problem. How do you propose to solve it? Why will (or won't) your solution work? Explain. 

 

FWIW: My students love these classes and all the students in danger of dropping out jump at the opportunity to take these classes. And they receive good grades in them.So we know they can learn.  They learn when faced with something they see is challenging and where failure leads to reflection instead of punishment.

So, we know what works to get the students engaged. We know they can and want to learn. We just need to make it meaningful from their (the students') perspective. I have never seen a two+ hour test that students find value in at all. Seems like we know what part of the problem is.

Thursday saw the next salvo in the war on education with “Cuomo antes up on schools as budget dance begins.” After imposing a 2% tax cap on schools and cutting and gutting the state aid over the years, he now wants to try and solve the problem that he and his corporate overlords created by offering poor school districts money. This amount has been called “anemic” and “hog ties” schools because they won't know who receives how much later in the year. The districts start the budgeting process now. They need to know this information now so that they can more effectively plan for the upcoming year. But Cuomo won't tell them.

Why?

That brings us to Friday's tidbit “Struggling schools may get extra state funds.” Note the word “may.” The money will come, but more will come to districts that agree to privatize than to other districts. The code words/phrase for privatization is “community schools.” School districts must agree to convert schools over to these “community schools” which will have social services included in the buildings.

Why can't we just do that now? Bring in the drug and alcohol counseling now? The family supports, medical services, employment centers, etc. The plan is to import these services into the school, give them two (2) years to improve, and when they fail to do so, put them into receivership (basically privatize them) and keep the services running.

And, at that, according to Billy Easton of the Alliance for Quality Education (AQE), this isn't enough money to address the problem.

So, with all this insanity going on, what are we to do?

Let's go back to Sunday (Jan 10) and the “Viewpoints” section where Chris Serrone writes in “State can deliver a high-quality education without standardized testing” about the values and virtues of … portfolio based assessments. As we all know, a portfolio is a collection a work that a person collects and present to show what they are capable of.

And educational portfolio is the same thing. It collects all the students work: class work, homework, research projects, quizzes, tests, anything a student works on in school and organizes it into one (or more) binders. From this the student can demonstrate better what they have learned, where they succeeded or failed, and explain why.

And it costs much less than standardized testing and has been shown in top achieving school systems around the world to work better.

So, why don't we do it? Corporations can't make a profit off of it and students learn more and better from it.

So, what do we do as socialists?

We demand:

1. Full funding of school districts to be paid for by ending corporate subsidies and collecting all that have been paid out over the years.

2. A maximum class size of 15 students per teacher.

3. An end to standardized testing and a switch to portfolio based evaluation instead.

4. Inclusion in impoverished school districts and schools of social services to help support families and students in need.

It is time we stopped making teachers the villains and punishing students with tests that show and prove nothing.